* * Anonymous Doc: It Helps to See the Patients

Saturday, February 22, 2014

It Helps to See the Patients

"Hey, [Anon Doc], it seems like you're always pretty busy in clinic."

"Yeah, you're not?"

"Not really.  I probably don't have my patients come back often enough.  I usually just give them a year of refills and tell them only to call me if there's a problem."

"Oh...."

"I call them every couple months to check in...."

"..."

"Turns out a lot of patients lie on the phone.  Or think they're doing well when they aren't. Turns out a lot of my patients have died. Totally weird, right?"

"Maybe it means what we do actually matters?"

"Oh, I don't know. I think it's just luck of the draw with the patients."

4 comments:

  1. I hope you completely made this one up.

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  2. You guys are allowed to give YEARLY refills? Ouch. In South Africa scripts are valid for a maximum of 6 months. Suppose it prevents the above from happening.
    Like anonymous, I kind of hope you just made this one up, though...

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  3. Oh dear god. If your IM population is anything like my IM patients everybody has diabetes, heart failure, HTN, renal insufficiency... To not see these people at least q3months is insane! Unless this guy has some magic patient population where everyone is young and healthy then this fellow needs a swift kick in the pants by a program director.

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  4. This blog is great. I actually started reading your blog the day you came back! Have you thought about creating a Tumblr blog? You would probably get a much better response there. These posts are extremely hilarious/sad (and sometimes unfortunate) and I believe so many more people would enjoy reading this.

    ReplyDelete